Building On My Budget: Myr Ordeal

Hey everyone and welcome back to Building On My Budget (BOMB)! For this week, I built a Modern deck that made me want to shoot myself in the head virtually every game I played, was no fun for my opponents to play against, and gave me carpal tunnel syndrome.

The problem, as I found out, is that arbitrarily large includes clicking "ok" several dozen to a hundred times per combo. I'm sure there were some Magic Online shortcuts I missed, but *spoiler alert* skip down to my fourth game against kang8r.

Okay, are you back now? Of course not—nobody skips down! Let me walk you through that game as it happened to me.

#20: Cast Myr Retriever a 20th time. My opponent didn't mulligan this game, and I played first, so only 30 more casts to go until I can gravestorm Bitter Ordeal to remove their entire deck in one turn!

#55: Choose the same target for Bitter Ordeal gravestorm copy #4. This is my fifth Bitter Ordeal since I at least get one for the original spell. This also reminds me that I cast Myr Retriever one too many times because I didn't account for the original Bitter Ordeal. Oh dear!

#117: Remove card #8 from my opponent's library. Personally, I'd go with the latter. It's a deeply moving album about one man's journey into depression and insanity in the wake of his mother dying of cancer and his sister committing suicide.

#202: Resolve the original Bitter Ordeal. Why did I cast it one too many times?

#203: Pass the turn. Win.

So yes, 203 individual clicks on turn 4 in order to get my combo off and win the game. This was not fun for me at all. I think this deck has potential if you play it either U/B or Grixis, but I was so demotivated after playing just eight games with it that I prayed for sweet merciful death and started planning out my deck for the next Building On My Budget.

Here are some of the highlights (lowlights?) of my playtest games:

Game 1: karasinkohu2, U/W Control

I led off with Inquisition of Kozilek and saw double Cryptic Command in karasinkohu2's hand. They got to four mana before I could combo off, making it virtually impossible for me to win because of their ability to bounce my Heartless Summoning plus counter one of my key spells in the same turn.

Record: 0-1

Game 2: itsjustmegreg, U/B Control

Itsjustmegreg played a Nightveil Specter on turn 3 and proceeded to use it to rip Shred Memory off the top of my deck, making it virtually impossible for me to win before I died to the Specter. Yes, this should have been my signal to just give up on this deck entirely.

Record: 0-2

Game 3: KNTM, Reanimator

I got a turn 2 Heartless Summoning, turn 3 Shred Memory, turn 4 go infinite, drawing a concession. Note that this was the only time I drew a concession in a win versus having to combo off all the way.

Record: 1-2

Game 4: kang8r, Mono-White Aggro

See the recounting at the beginning of this article. I swear to god and all that is holy, I am not typing that out again.

Golgari Thug was pretty useless, and I was drawing enough win conditions each game, so I took out Storm Entity in favor of more discard and more draw.

Out:

In:

Game 6: HandsomeBoyMS, Jund

I got all the pieces except for one. He got Sarkhan Vol, ultimated it, and then dropped a second Sarkhan Vol to kill me in one turn. I drew about eight extra cards this game, none of which let me get together the entire combo.

Record: 2-4

Game 7: Malbete, Mono-Black Combo

Tip: Playing a combo deck that revolves around Teferi's Puzzle Box and Howling Mine is not going to win against a deck that can combo off at a moment's notice.

Record: 3-4

Game 8: aflowerispower, Bant

Aflowerispower got multiple shroud creatures plus a Worship. Yet again I assembled all the combo pieces but one. They used Wargate to get Leyline of Sanctity. I conceded.

Next week I'm going to be taking a break from Building On My Budget to write a post-event wrap-up for Grand Prix Richmond. This article will go up on Thursday of next week in place of my normal BOMB article. Two weeks from now BOMB will return to Standard with a deck that I've been excited about for the past three weeks!

About Ben Bleiweiss

Ben has been involved for over 20 years with Magic, including two tenures as a weekly columnist for WotC, eight Pro Tour appearances, providing coverage for the Pro Tour, and being a financial expert on Magic values. Ben started as an employee at SCG in 2003 as a card buyer and is now the General Manager.